From missed flights to surprise proposals, travel turns up the heat in relationships
Travel broadens the mind, but it also swells the heart, as couples across the UAE are finding out. Perhaps because of the way trips bypass routine and compress time, they are now an increasingly common setting for relationships to start, solidify – or cross red lines.
Dubai resident Shirin Zemmo upgraded her relationship mid-journey on a 2022 trip to her then-boyfriend Lorenzo Eelen’s home country of Belgium. They were young, travelling on a budget and staying with his grandparents outside Antwerp when the first hint dropped. “Remember this phrase? And they lived happily ever after,” his grandfather asked as they were leaving on a day of sightseeing in Bruges. As they were ticking off the Belgian clichés – cobbled streets, waffles, and mussels for dinner – they ended up at a park with a windmill.
“By the time we got there, I knew what was happening – his grandfather had already sort of confirmed it,” the Palestinian-Russian expat says. “Plus I saw someone who looked like his cousin but of course my husband denied it.”
Lorenzo handed her a booklet that he’d printed out with their love story, with the big question at the end. “By that time, he’d gotten on his knee and had taken out the ring, he was shaking, and I started crying, despite already knowing what was going on. I think no matter how prepared you think you are mentally, it’s a very emotional moment,” she says.
Sharing new experiences away from home made the moment extra special, Lorenzo says. Adds Shirin: “We love travelling and enjoy it so much, so that’s why it means a lot to us.”
Both are now 29 years old and have been married three years. Perhaps it’s the language barrier, but until today, Lorenzo’s grandfather doesn’t understand how she figured it out. But she made sure an LED light with the words ‘And they lived happily ever after’ was at the reception.
TRAVEL to stress-test your relationship
With travel now more accessible than ever, couples are using it as a compatibility test to test the strength of their relationships. That’s according to Booking.com, which found that two-thirds (69 per cent) of travellers are open to getting away with a partner, colleague or new friend for a wavelength vibe check.
The accommodation aggregator polled 29,733 adults from 33 countries, including the UAE, about their travel plans as part of its 2026 trends report. As might be expected from a demographic that experienced travel more frequently earlier in life, Gen Z is the most experimental of all. As much as 81 per cent are keen to simulate real-life dynamics on trips.
Of the total number polled, 62 per cent said they would even go to a remote location to see how their companion handles ambiguity and discomfort, while 59 per cent are willing to embrace travel with severe constraints, such as budget limits, language barriers or limited connectivity to see if connections soar or stall.
Nikita Fernandes, 28, is already married, but faced a stress-test moment recently when personality differences with her 29-year-old sales manager husband surfaced ahead of a trip to the Seychelles.
“I’m the kind of person who will book flights way in advance, colour code my itinerary, and even do intense research on restaurant menus, since my husband is a picky eater. As for my husband Valentine, he loves being a guest on the trip,” the Pakistani national says.
So, she’d done the work: researching packages, negotiated with travel agencies and found a package that ticked all the boxes. Valentine’s tasks were booking the tickets and checking the flights.
At 3am the night before they were to fly out, she was jolted awake by her phone, which had been ringing several times. She picked up on the fifth attempt: their tour guide was checking if they had cleared immigration and exited the airport.
“I grabbed the tickets and looked at the date. Our flight was the previous night,” she says, talking about how she panicked, pacing around the room and praying for a solution.
With non-refundable hotel and tours locked down, the couple had nine hours to make it – except that by that time, a one-way ticket cost about as much as the entire trip, she says.
The rescue line came from a friend who found a discounted ticket.“On the flight, we stayed silent and kept trying to avoid eye contact with each other,” she says, describing how they skirted around the topic. As she finally opened up about her frenzied reaction to high-intensity situations, she also realised how Valentine was the complete opposite.
“I told him how much I appreciated that. He held my hand and told me it was completely all right to get nervous and that he was always going to be the calm in my chaos,” she says in a WhatsApp message. “He told me that if I need a little tapping out, he’d let me tap out. I know that about him, but in situations like this, you just appreciate it so much more.”
She proves Mark Twain’s point, even a century later: there’s no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
Indeed, external stimuli may offer a new perspective. That was the case with publishing industry professional Ipshita Sharma, 43 years. She and her partner decided to call it quits after ten years when they were travelling through Austria last year.
“We saw a wedding and I said I’d like that someday. He replied with ‘Absolutely not’,” she says. The couple had travelled together before and weathered other challenges – but the deal breaker came with a question of future goals.
“When a couple travels together, adversity is often inevitable,” says Tatiana Esperanco, a clinical psychologist at Jumeirah’s Medcare Camali Clinic. As couples, our relationships are anchored by a familiar context that takes the form of routines, shared reference points and support networks.
“Changing country disrupts these stabilising structures and invites a reorganisation of the couple system: how partners communicate, share responsibilities, negotiate boundaries and make sense of family roles in a new environment.”
These challenges can either intensify misunderstandings and conflict, or strengthen the bond because they call the couple to rediscover one another in a different context, she explains.
Making up in the Maldives
Missed connections, rule changes, ticket fiascos – these are integral aspects of travel. With the surfeit of details come new opportunities to rediscover each other.
But as Sharjah resident Tazeen Jafri discovered, there are ways to compensate for travel oversights. Her own a stress-test moment was last May, when her husband had forgotten to apply for the electronic travel authorisation (ETA) ahead of their holiday to Sri Lanka. Their airline wouldn’t board them without the document.
“We were legit ready to walk out the door,” she remembers. He applied immediately and relief came soon after, but not for long: there was no authorisation for their baby. The family pushed everything out by a day, but approval didn’t arrive. Local elections in Sri Lanka that day led to further delays and Tazeen even spoke to a contact in the country’s immigration department.
That’s when her husband rolled out Plan B, decided on the spur of the moment: “He cancelled everything and booked a whole new trip to Maldives,” she says. “I was hoping we could go to Oman or Egypt, somewhere we could get a visa on arrival as Pakistanis – but no, we burned dollars.”
With hours to spare, Tazeen went to discount store Day to Day for a new wardrobe, she says, before explaining how the experience brought them closer. “No, we didn’t fight. We use our ‘fight’ energy on other lousy things like parenting styles and what should we cook for lunch/dinner,” she says. “Plus, it was four days in absolute heaven.”
Dubai, Denmark and Covid-19
Sri Lanka has changed its visa rules in phases over the past couple of years, but there was a moment when travel was uncertain everywhere. But love will find a way, as Houri Elmayan and Christian Malholm know.
The couple, who are in their forties, met, fell in love and made it official over a series of trips during the pandemic. He was in Dubai on business and she was out with friends when they met, as it turns out, at a sports bar in Motor City.
“We chatted all night until he had to be at the airport, and I told him, as we do almost out of habit in Lebanon, let me know if you’ve landed safely. Him being Danish, he took that literally, and he did – we’d exchanged LinkedIn details,” the public relations expert tells me over a voice note. They continued to chat for two months before meeting in person for the second time. “So it was love at second sight,” she laughs.
As retail executive Christian tells it, it was a casual setting where nothing was lined up for romance: “I think we were both in a state of mind where we met only to keep our end of the appointment. But we had a really good chemistry from first glance and I felt the instant attraction.”
After nearly a dozen trips back and forth, he proposed to her on Valentine’s Day the following year, in 2020, and they were set for a big fat Lebanese wedding. But lockdown meant they had to have a small civil marriage with just 10 people in Denmark, with Houri visiting on a 90-day ‘sweetheart’ visa.
“There were adjustments,” Houri tells it now. “There were a lot of adjustments on all sides – you know, I’d have preferred we spent more time together, but in the end, it has worked out and it’s worked out beautifully.”
If that sounds a bit rushed, Houri agrees. She says there were phases of the relationship she would have liked to savour for a little bit longer without all the Covid-related uncertainty. “Travel gave us a chance encounter we never could have planned, and that moment of luck opened the door to an unexpected but everlasting love,” Houri adds.
Rumble on the road
Tatiana Esperanco, a clinical psychologist at Medcare Camali Clinic in Dubai, has three tips to keep the romance alive on the road when things go wrong:
Communication
Create space to talk about fears, dreams, expectations and needs, about the trip and the relationship. Under stress, couples often slip into “mind-reading”, assuming the other should intuit what is needed. Naming needs clearly and kindly protects connection.
Reconnection
Prioritise couple time with regularity and consistency. Reconnection does not require long hours or expensive dates; it requires moments of genuine availability, where both partners are emotionally present with each other. Small rituals, such as an evening check-in, can sustain intimacy.
Curiosity
Remember that each person, and the couple itself, is always changing. Approach your partner with genuine curiosity. Keep discovering who they are becoming in this new context. Desire and romance are nurtured through ongoing reunion, shared meaning and the courage to keep communicating.
